Traditional travel services and agencies have a long-standing history in the travel industry. Generally described, the traditional travel service provides a consumer access to travel related suppliers to allow the consumer to reserve or purchase various goods or services. For example, the traditional travel service can provide a link between a consumer and a number of travel related industries such as airlines, hotels, tour guide companies, cruise ship companies, etc. However, to utilize the traditional travel service, the consumer is required to visit a physical location of the travel service to carry out a desired task. Often, the consumer makes multiple trips, all of which typically must be completed during the business hours of the travel service. Accordingly, some traditional travel service implementations become deficient in terms of limited number of geographical store locations for consumers to visit and times of availability for conducting business. Additionally, although some traditional travel services offer telephonic access, the consumer can also experience variations in quality related to varying travel service personnel and/or availability related to limited travel service hours of operation.
The development of computing devices, such as personal computers, mobile phones, personal digital assistants, and a number of corresponding computer-based businesses, have attempted to reduce the need for the traditional travel service. In a particularly common embodiment, a number of travel services utilize the computing devices to communicate with consumers. More specifically, travel services can utilize the Internet, a vast number of computers often referred to as the “Web” or “World Wide Web,” to establish communication. Such travel services are generally referred to as Web-based travel services.
As applied to a Web-based travel service, many of the travel services located on the Web interact with a potential traveler by presenting the consumer with one or more interactive displays, generally referred to as Web sites, to transact business by allowing the user to make purchases, modifications, inquiries, etc. By interacting with the Web site, such as by entering data through a keyboard, or by selecting graphically presented criteria, a consumer can manipulate the computer and Web site to accomplish various travel-related tasks. Moreover, the consumer can accomplish these tasks at various times throughout the day, and without being required to physically travel to a particular physical travel service location.
The relationship between a Web-based travel service and the travel product suppliers can be characterized as either an agency configuration or a merchant configuration. In an agency configuration, the Web-based travel service serves as an intermediary between the consumer computing devices and the various suppliers, but the travel service does not possess complete selling rights of the inventory items being sold (such as hotel rooms, airline tickets, cruise packages, etc.). Instead, each inventory item is subject to the partial control of the supplier, in terms of managing inventory item pricing to the consumer. For example, under an agency configuration, if a potential traveler requests an airline ticket, the agency configured travel service may be able to complete the consumer's reservation, but the agency may not be restricted from setting the price the consumer will pay for the ticket. Additionally, the agency configured travel service may have limited control of how funds are collected from the consumer. Thus, with regard to revenue in an agency configuration, the Web-based travel service typically is limited to receiving a percentage of the transaction amount received by the supplier. Alternatively, the Web-based travel service may collect a flat service fee for each processed transaction. Still further, the Web-based travel server may receive a flat fee to advertise a particular supplier's inventory items.
The agency configuration can become deficient in a variety of manners. In one aspect, the Web-based travel service is limited to offering consumers only the inventory items the supplier has available at the moment of communication between the supplier and the travel service. For example, a conventional Web-based travel service often advertises inventory items that may not actually be available when a reservation request is sent to the supplier. Moreover, even if the inventory items are available, the Web-based travel service has limited control over the price of the products/services offered to the consumer. Thus, the Web-based travel service has reduced control of the revenue that it can generate from various consumer transactions in different economic markets. Thus, an agency configured travel service can be a deficient approach to providing Web-based travel services.
In contrast, under a merchant configuration, a Web-based travel service is allotted inventory (such as hotel rooms, airline seats, cruise suites, etc.) by various suppliers such that the Web-based travel service has control as to how the inventory is disposed. For example, a hotel supplier may sell/consign a room in the hotel to the Web-based travel service such that the Web-based travel service has the ability to sell use of the hotel room to a consumer. Unlike an agency configuration, the Web-based travel service has more control over the price of the inventory item and how funds are collected from the consumer. More specifically, with regard to revenue, in the merchant configuration, the Web-based travel service's revenue is typically based on the difference between the price a consumer pays the Web-based travel service and the cost the service must pay the supplier. Thus, the merchant configured Web-based travel service has more control of its revenue stream.
In a typical merchant configuration commercial transaction, the Web-based travel service is allotted blocks of inventory items, such as blocks of airline seats on a particular flight for a series of dates (e.g., 10 seats of Flight 492 for the month of August) or blocks of hotel rooms for a range of dates (e.g., 5 penthouse suites at ABC hotel for the week of August 1-7). The allotment of blocks of inventory items can be referred to as batch inventory. To manage the batch inventory, the Web-based travel service sorts the inventory items according to one or more identifying characteristics. For example, distinguishable pieces of hotel room batch inventory items can be processed and stored according to identifying characteristics such as location (e.g., name of hotel and address), a type of room (e.g., suite), and date of use (e.g., Jul. 28, 2001). Accordingly, depending on the number of different types of meeting items, the hotel room inventory items could be sorted by hotel name, then by room type, and then by date of existence.
Although the conventional characteristics sorting method facilitates inventory management in a merchant configuration, deficiencies can arise with batch inventory items having matching identifiable characteristics, but differing non-identifying characteristics. With reference to the above example, assume the hotel allots a Web-based travel service a block of rooms having a set of identifiable characteristics. In accordance with the traditional sorting method, the Web-based travel service stores the inventory items according to its identifiable characteristics (e.g., 20 double rooms at XYZ hotel on May 21, 2001). However, if the hotel supplier allots a second batch of inventory having identical matching characteristics (30 additional double rooms at XYZ hotel on May 21, 2001) but different non-identifiable characteristics (e.g., cost, terms of restriction, service fees), the conventional processing method can become deficient in a variety of situations.
With reference to a potential consumer price/supplier cost deficiency, because all similar inventory items are sorted together, the traditional sorting and processing method does not efficiently manage different cost/price of individual inventory items (e.g., the 20 double rooms at $50 and the 30 double rooms at $65). To account for variations in supplier cost, some merchant configured travel services average a supplier cost/consumer price across the total number of an allotted instances of the particular inventory item. With reference to the previous example this would equal the travel service considering 50 rooms at $59. Thus, the Web-based travel services could potentially lose revenue by under-charging some consumers and attempt to make up the difference by over-charging other consumers. One skilled in the relevant art will appreciate that this approach can be deficient because it assumes that the travel service will sell its entire allotment of inventory items, which may not always occur. Furthermore, there can be some negative consumer impact in promoting varied consumer priced transactions.
Another deficiency associated with processing batch inventory relates to some portion of the batch inventory items having limitation of use restrictions. For example, assume that a supplier allots the first block of rooms to the hotel with no limitations of use and subsequently allots the second batch inventory of rooms (having identical identifying characteristics) with the limitation that the rooms from the first batch of inventory must be sold first. Under a conventional merchant configured travel service, because the rooms have identical identifying characteristics, the Web-based travel service stores the room data together. However, because the conventional Web-based travel service cannot typically distinguish from which batch inventory allotment an individual piece of inventory item corresponds to, the restriction of use may be difficult to enforce. Thus, the conventional travel service has various deficiencies in attempting to process batch inventory.
Another deficiency associated with the conventional merchant configuration, and not necessarily limited to batch inventory, arises from an attempt by a Web-based travel service to coordinate with various suppliers. In a typical embodiment, the allotment of inventory items depends on communication between a travel service agent and a supplier agent utilizing several modes of communication, such as telephone, electronic mail, fax, and traditional mail. Often, the inability to establish continuous communications can cause delays throughout various portions of the transaction, such as during notification of an offer for an allotment, confirmation of an acceptance of an allotment, as well as negotiation of additional inventory or varying terms. For example, assume that a Web-based travel agent is attempting to negotiate with a hotel supplier to receive an allotment of a block of rooms at a specific cost. The negotiation can be delayed because there may not be a standardized form of communication between the supplier and the travel service (e.g., one agent prefers the telephone while the other utilizes regular mail). Moreover, even if the parties can establish communications and an agreement can be reached between the supplier agent and a travel service agent, the agreement may not be properly documented for later use. For example, a travel service accounting department, removed from the agent, may have trouble providing a supplier the proper authorization to receive the allotment of rooms at the negotiated price during an account reconciliation, especially if the accounts are being reconciled some time later. Thus, the traditional merchant configured travel agency inefficiently must establish procedures for interfacing with each potential supplier and must also establish adequate record keeping practices for each type of supplier.
Thus, there is a need for a system and method for managing inventory items to facilitate consumer inventory items queries. More specifically, there is a need for a system and method for managing consumer and supplier requests for managing inventory items having a variety of characteristics.